


and hushed the shrunken seas

by rohkeutta



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mental Instability, Mindfuck, POV Second Person, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohkeutta/pseuds/rohkeutta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s winter, and Eames is dying over and over again, in the hospital, in the wheelchair, on his feet. Eames dies and dies and doesn’t die, because you’re not sure if he's something you dreamt up, after all. Maybe there’s something wrong with you, too, if you dream up somebody so in pain, so dirtied; half the man, half the disease.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and hushed the shrunken seas

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from _Sweeney among the Nightingales_ by T.S. Eliot. I apologise for possible typos, English is not my first language.

 

_Frisch weht der Wind_  
_Der Heimat zu,_  
_Mein Irisch Kind,_  
_Wo weilest du?_

_—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,_  
_Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not_  
_Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither_  
_Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,_  
_Looking into the heart of light, the silence._  
_Öd’ und leer das Meer._

\- T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land

_I have always been sick,_ says the man sitting on the other side of the room. _I can’t remember what it could be like. Not being ill, I mean._

You can’t remember his name (if you ever did) and you think he doesn’t remember it either. He's just a sick man in his sixties, sitting next to a window, watching the empty pool in the backyard. You're standing on the other side of the room, watching his wheelchair, the grey in his eyes and hair, thinking how you should remember this man, old enough to be your father even though he isn’t. Your father is still properly alive, somewhere, not like him who’s got his left foot in grave.

You know he's ill, but you know that you've forgotten something important, and wonder if, suddenly, you are ill, too.

Stop. Rewind. This isn’t how it should go.

 

You remember the hospital, when you wake up. You remember the smell of it on Eames’ skin, the bird bones of his frail hands when the illness had already eaten its way inside him. The thought of the hospital, the disease, his hands, the hollowness of his cheeks, always makes you remember how much he loved you and how late you realised it.  
Eames died at the age of thirty-eight, or at least you think he did. You can’t remember if it was a dream, if _Eames_ was a dream or just pure, brilliant reality.

You think he was maybe too ill to be real. Real people oughtn’t to suffer as much as he did. Real people oughtn’t to be dying for two years before finally doing so.

 

You have walked through this hospital so many times that you have learnt the layout perfectly, the labyrinth that is not a labyrinth. You have seen the sick man before, but you’re not there to visit him. You see him and sometimes talk to him, and always he asks you to push him to the gate to watch you leave, and the cabbie asks if your father is doing better and you don’t reply, because he is not your father.

 

It’s winter. It’s always winter, always the hospital, always Eames saying over and over again, _I’m dying, Arthur. I’m dying so very soon._  
_What’s wrong with you,_ you ask again and again, and he says,  
_I think I’ve swallowed the moon, and it’s not crawling back up anymore._  
It’s cold and you’re closing windows, time after time, wishing that your bones would feel warm and light just by hearing the lock click shut. Eames is trailing his knuckles over your back and saying, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry that I ruined you._

You are not sure what year it is.

It’s winter, and Eames is dying over and over again, in the hospital, in the wheelchair, on his feet. Eames dies and dies and doesn’t die, because you’re not sure if he is something you dreamt up, after all. Maybe there’s something wrong with you, too, if you dream up somebody so in pain, so dirtied, half the man, half the disease.  
It’s winter and it’s never turning into spring again, the bed is empty and you can’t sleep anymore. Outside the snow is littered with tracks, like those of a large canine or a crawling man. You can’t tell if they are left by a forest animal or if Eames from your mind is haunting you and the yard, on all fours because his feet can’t carry his weight anymore, the cane fallen in the curb. Next thing you know, he is in the wheelchair and it never leaves tracks in the snow.

 

Some mornings you wake up after the cabbie has asked again and again, _Is your father doing better, sir?,_ and think that the hospital is, after all those years, a natural dream repeating itself. Because down in the constructed dreamscape Eames never gets old, and he never gets sick, never sits in the wheelchair with sagging skin and trembling, bird-like hands. Down there Eames is always thirty-three and making inception possible with his quick wit and impeccable skill, green flashing in his grey eyes and his swift fingers flipping poker chips and coins and pens and everything else that is small enough to fit between the crooks and scars of his hands.

It’s haunting, for you don’t know if Eames down there never gets sick because he never existed in the real life, because _he never got sick in the first place_ , and just who is the old man watching the pool, if he is not Eames, but Eames never lived long enough to be sixty-four (if he ever lived at all).

 

Dom thinks you need a holiday. He thinks you are overthinking and stressed out, and you want to ask him if you ever performed inception together, with a thief who had a clever, sharp tongue and even sharper mind, or is it just a fragment of your imagination. But asking about inception is like asking about Mal’s death, and asking about Mal’s death is like asking whether _she_ was real or not.  
Dom says things like _When was the last time you slept, Arthur, fuck,_ and, _You really should rest, you seem unfocused,_ but he never, ever says anything about Eames; he never sighs, _He isn’t coming back, Arthur,_ or, _You had two years to prepare yourself for this, I didn’t have even a minute back then, with Mal._

He never mentions Eames’ name and you can never spit back to his face that _he_ didn’t have to watch his love wither away, turn pale and fragile, so weak that running and walking and in the end even standing got impossible, because you fear that he will look at you gravely and say, _Arthur, neither did you. He isn’t real. He never was. His skin never turned into papyrus, and you never pushed his wheelchair through the hospital to watch the tulips blooming in the yard._

You fear that he will smile at you, sadness written all over his face, and tell you, _I think you should retire. I think you have lost your mind._

Eventually you stop visiting, when Eames has been dead for two years and eleven months and the concern in Dom’s eyes is growing. It is winter and you are turning forty, spending increasingly more time down there with that Eames who will never get the disease. Dom calls and calls and calls, leaves messages to the voice mail, pleads, _Come back to reality, Arthur,_ and, _If not for me, then for Phillipa and James._

 

You are older than Eames in the dreams you build for yourself. He trails his deft fingers across the wrinkles that are sinking slowly into corners of your mouth and into your forehead, the crow’s feet and your angular, sharp jawbone, and says, _You really are getting old, aren’t you._  
He is always young, in the bloom of his life, waist still healthily narrow and shoulders broad with muscle he will never lose. Eames laughs at you, kisses your wrinkles and says, _I bet you are going to be a fetching sixty-year-old._  
_You are never going to be sixty,_ you think but keep quiet and roll around to press your face into the crook of Eames’ neck, where his only tattoo is snaking up to the back of his ear.

 

Eames’ wrist is bony when you close your fingers around it, but he can still walk on his own; the illness in him not yet fused into each and every one of his cells. His breathing is slightly shallower in his sleep, but he is only a year and few months older than you. He has done inception, his fingers can still flip a coin faster than eye can follow, and he is extremely, irrevocably in love with you. He’s still so, so completely, endlessly in love with you, not yet with his disease or the tulips in the backyard of the hospital.  
_I love you,_ you say to him, quietly, and reach over to kiss his temple, the spot where his pale skin ends and his soft hair begins. He trembles under your touch.  
_I love you,_ you say again, a little breathless, because suddenly it is so real that it’s almost painful. _You are ill and you are dying and you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen or touched._

 

The sick man is holding a book in his thin, old hands, and watching you with grey, steady eyes filled with prolonged suffering. He is sitting too still, breathing too evenly. You are sitting on the other side of the room, leafing through a paper without a date or any proper news. All the interviewees are ill.  
_Who are you?_ You finally ask him, folding the paper up and placing it on the coffee table.  
_I’m the sick man,_ he replies, cocks his head to the side like a curious bird. _You used to know me, a long time ago. You come to visit me, still._  
You shake your head; tap your fingers against your thigh. _I’m not here to see you. I can’t even remember your name. I came to push his wheelchair outside to see the tulips._

He smiles, sad and soft. There’s something familiar in the curve of his mouth, among all the wrinkles.  
_You’re almost thirty years late, Arthur,_ he says. His voice isn’t bitter.

 

You wake up and reach to the empty side of the bed. You are not sure what year it is. There are sounds of footsteps in the stairs, old wood creaking under Eames’ weight. It’s winter.

**Author's Note:**

> Rough translation of the poem since my German is extremely rusty:
> 
> _Fresh blows the wind_   
>  _To the homeland_   
>  _My Irish child,_   
>  _Where are you now?_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Öd’ und leer das Meer = Dull and empty the sea_


End file.
